POLL/PHOTOS: Jury in Gateway murder trial needs another day to decide Cooper's fate

BONITA SPRINGS - After hearing gruesome details of a couple's bloody death, listening to accounts of tangled relationships and testimony on the intricacies of DNA testing, jurors in the Gateway murder trial began their deliberations Tuesday with one request.

They wanted to see Fred Cooper's jacket for themselves. That scrubbed over hunting-style camouflage jacket had been central to much of the testimony in the case.

Next, the jurors wanted some coffee. Their decision in this double murder trial wouldn't be a quick one.

A little more than three hours after they started deliberations, they asked for another day.

In final arguments only a few hours before, though, some had painted the case as clear-cut.

The prosecution claimed Cooper — jilted by his long-term girlfriend — took the life of her lover, Steven Andrews, and his wife, Michelle Andrews. They claimed Cooper tried to cover this with lie after lie.

For the defense, the case was similarly simple: they claimed the evidence didn't tie Cooper to the scene, and that Cooper's early untruths to detectives could be explained away by a story of a secret friendship — and sex — with one of the victims.

But to jurors, it was convoluted enough that they later asked for a flip chart and some markers to help make sense of what they had heard over the course of the two-week trial.

Cooper, 30, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary in the deaths of the Andrews.

Steven Andrews died after being shot in the head. Michelle Andrews was asphyxiated and beaten. Their bodies were found on Dec. 27, 2005 in the upstairs bedroom of their Gateway home.

Just after 3:30 p.m., 12 jurors — four men and eight women — left the courtroom to start deliberations, with 41 pages of instructions, a verdict form and a copy of the indictment outlining the charges Cooper faces. They returned about three hours later without a verdict, and were to spend Tuesday night sequestered in a local hotel.

Before they began their deliberations, Circuit Judge Thomas Reese had reminded them that Cooper had not been required to prove anything.

If Cooper is found guilty of first-degree murder, the trial would start a penalty phase in which jurors would recommend a sentence of either life in prison or death.

Jurors could also decide the evidence in this case does not support first-degree murder charges, though, and then they would then need to decide whether there is evidence that Cooper is guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder or manslaughter.

During the trial, jurors heard from detectives, crime scene investigators and DNA experts. They heard from the Andrewses' neighbors. They heard from Cooper's former boss and from Cooper's former girlfriend, Kellie Ballew.

Last, they heard from the defendant himself, when Cooper took the stand in his own defense Monday morning.

Tuesday morning, as chief assistant state attorney Randy McGruther made his final arguments in the case, he said the evidence points to one reasonable conclusion: that Cooper is guilty of premeditated first-degree murder.

"This is not the work of drug deal gone bad out in the street," McGruther said. "There is only one person, only one reason that a person committed these murders. It was a crime of passion. It wasn't to steal. We know that because there were no valuables taken."

That person was Cooper, he said, the man who dated Ballew for more than six years, the person who had been told that relationship was ending, and "the person who was told on Dec. 26, that he needed to be respectful" if Ballew chose to start a new relationship, and a person who could have learned of Ballew's affair with Steven Andrews by looking at the text messages on her phone.

As for crime scene evidence — hair, or fingerprints — that the prosecution doesn't have, McGruther said that real life investigations aren't like television shows. Much DNA testing merely shows the obvious, such as tests that showed the blood on the floor of the Andrewses' bedroom was their own. And McGruther said it isn't surprising the killer wouldn't have left more traces behind.

"Criminals who plan their crime, also plan not to get caught," he said. With this crime, "it was too fast, too efficient, too sudden for him to sustain any injuries that would leave his blood behind."

He also noted that Cooper's lies "seem to be a fairly common occurrence," and he compared Cooper's testimony Monday to an "amazing" story that Cooper could have spent the past few years fine tuning.

He questioned how Cooper and Michelle Andrews could have set up the pre-arranged, secret meetings that Cooper described in his testimony, and have these meetings during the busy holidays, all without using cell phones.

As for the camouflage jacket so many neighbors recalled noticing on the strange man they saw, McGruther questioned why Cooper would be cleaning it at work for an hour during the motorcycle repair shop's busiest season. The rip Cooper described in the lining of the jacket, McGruther said, was one that had been there for a while.

"So we're to believe that after that jacket's been ripped for six months, he's going to take that time to cut the lining out and clean it?" McGruther asked. "He cleaned it up real good before he gave it to detectives."

Many of the witnesses that prosecutors called to the stand to describe a strange man they had seen in their Gateway neighborhood struggled with specifics — something Garber called attention to — but they all recalled that jacket.

One neighbor, Doug Jimmo, who saw a strange man the next morning, about two minutes after the 911 call was made from the Andrewses' home, wasn't completely certain which face to pick out of a lineup. McGruther said that was because those photos only showed faces. In the courtroom, where Jimmo could see Cooper's build, McGruther said: "He didn't hesitate. He turned and pointed and said that's him, right there."

As for Cooper's story about having sex with Michelle Andrews in the driveway of her home the night of Dec. 26, 2005, McGruther called this story too "convenient" to believe.

Cooper could remember the slip Michelle Andrews was wearing was blue — just like the slip in evidence in the case — but he couldn't remember the color of the running suit she wore over it.

There are still some unknowns, he said: why Cooper would have killed Michelle Andrews along with Steven Andrews. There's also the question of why Cooper would have returned to Gateway about 7 a.m. the next morning.

"Who knows. Maybe even concern over Lucasz?" McGruther suggested.

Lucasz Andrews was the couple's toddler son who was holding a cordless phone when a deputy first responded to the 911 call from the home.

But the horrific deaths of Steven and Michelle Andrews — and the pain their families have gone through — should not "cloud" jurors' judgment, Deputy Public Defender Ken Garber said as he began his final arguments.

"A trial is a search for the truth. Fred Cooper has tried to bring you the truth. Did he use bad judgment in lying to the police in this investigation? Yes he did," Garber said. "But does that equate with guilt?"

He described December of 2005 as a time of turmoil for two couples, and recapped the version of events that Cooper gave from the stand on Monday about his friendship with Michelle Andrews. It wasn't a "concocted story," he said.

"She's looking for someone who can help her save her marriage," Garber said. "And that person that she turned to is Fred Cooper. She called him at work. She would have access to his work number."

The same contact list that was in Cooper's Bonita Springs home was also in the Andrewses' home. The fact there is no record of these calls is not odd, Garber said: Michelle would have been trying to keep this quiet.

Cooper became her ally, he said, and their bond led to sex on Dec. 26, 2005.

Garber pointed to what he considered holes in the prosecution's version of what happened, and that there could have been "another motive that is unknown to us" that caused the killings.

"The state would have you believe that the target of this crime is Steven Andrews," he said. "But that doesn't really fit with the crime scene. It's very apparent that Michelle was posed in the position she was put in ... So she could be the target of this crime, not Steven."

Other than the DNA evidence on Michelle Andrews's right hand fingernails and her nightgown — which could have come from consensual sex, Garber said — there was no evidence tying Cooper to crime scene. And DNA testing of Michelle Andrews's left fingernails excluded Cooper.

If Cooper was scratched by Michelle Andrews on both arms in a struggle in the bedroom, as prosecutors suggest, he asked, why wouldn't Cooper's DNA be on both of her hands?

"They left no stone unturned to be able to link him to this crime scene. But they weren't able to do it, because he did not commit these crimes," Garber said.